Ecological restoration through exclosure establishment has become an increasingly important approach to reversing degraded ecosystems in rangelands worldwide. The present study was conducted in northwestern Ethiopia where policy programs are aiming to restore degraded lands. Changes in soil properties following establishing exclosures on communal grazing lands were investigated. A space-for-time substitution approach was used to monitor changes in soil properties after conversion of communal grazing lands to exclosures with ages of establishment ranging from 1 to 7-years.
Although soil fertility is recognized as a primary constraint to agricultural production in developing countries, use of fertilizer in Sub-Saharan Africa is declining. Smallholder farmers still rely heavily on livestock manure for soil fertility management. To explore the determinants of soil fertility management practices, including both the use of cattle manure and inorganic fertilizer, data are used from a sample of 3,330 geo-referenced farm households across Central and Western Kenya. A bivariate probit model is applied to jointly examine the use of the two technologies.
Map details 50 land uses with a summary of the most common uses.
In the West African drylands, SOC sequestration is seen as one of the prominent strategies to both enhance the resilience of agro-ecosystems and mitigate global greenhouse effects. However, there is a dearth of baseline data that impede the design of site-appropriate recommended management practices (RMPs) to improve and sustain SOC accrual.
This project aims to increase agricultural productivity, incomes, and sustainable management of
land and water by small farmers in the rural Sierra region of Peru. Although results demonstrate
the effectiveness of increased productivity and commercialization of high value agricultural
commodities, this type of activity may be limited to certain parts of the watershed with access to
irrigation and startup capital. Interventions promoting commercialization, such as those of
Three major river basins flow out of Ethiopia into Sudan, constituting the Eastern Nile basin (the White Nile flows from the south). These are the Tekeze-Atbara flowing out of northern Ethiopia, the Baro-Akoba- Sobat flowing from southern Ethiopia, and the Blue Nile (Abay) sandwiched between the other two. The Blue Nile Basin, called the Abay in Ethiopia, is the largest branch of the Nile draining the Ethiopian highlands. It covers an estimated area of 311,437 square kilometers and is shared by Ethiopia and Sudan. It joins the White Nile in Khartoum, Sudan.
This report summarizes the results of a baseline household-?level survey, led by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), carried out in 7 villages and 140 households in Lushoto, Tanzania in January 2011. The objective of this baseline effort was to describe the characteristics of the farming systems found across a wide range of research sites in 12 countries, including the Lushoto site, and to better understand what kinds of farming practice changes households have been making and why.